1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a decoding method and an electronic device implementing the same. In particular, the invention relates to a method for decoding an encoded point matrix image and an electronic device implementing the method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Taiwanese Patent Publication No. 581970, entitled “Electronic Apparatus Utilizing a Graphical Indicator”, focuses mainly on constructing graphical indicators on a surface of an object (e.g., a book) in the form of microscopic image points, and obtaining information encoded in the graphical indicators by utilizing a suitable electronic apparatus.
As shown in FIG. 1, the graphical indicators are presented in the form of a combination of microscopic image points 900 that appears to be a background pattern. The combination of microscopic image points 900 is composed of a plurality of the graphical indicators arranged in a particular manner. Since these microscopic image points can be shrunk to an extremely small size, a naked eye can only recognize the letters “APPLE”, but not the combination of microscopic image points 900 disposed underneath the letters “APPLE” and hidden as the background. Therefore, the combination of microscopic image points 900 does not interfere with the interpretation of the main information, i.e., the letters “APPLE”. In addition, the combination of microscopic image points 900 is encoded with extra information by the graphical indicators.
Shown in FIG. 2 is an enlarged view of one of the graphical indicators 91 in the combination of microscopic image points 900. The graphical indicator 91 includes 6×6 state regions 913, each of which selectively includes a black point or remains blank to represent a first state “1” or a second state “0”. The state regions 913 can be decoded and converted into a bit array 914 as illustrated in FIG. 3. Thus, it is only required to put suitable representations in the state regions 913 of the graphical indicator 91 in order for the information to be obtainable when needed in the form of the bit array 914.
Referring back to FIG. 2, the method for acquiring or determining the graphical indicator 91 from the combination of microscopic image points 900 involves sectioning the state regions 913 into a header state region group 911 and a content state region group 912. As long as the header state region groups 911 of all of the graphical indicators 91 are set to be identical, then each of the graphical indicators 91 can be singled out and determined. On the other hand, the content state region group 912 contains the actual information.
However, due to the design nature of the graphical indicator 91, under the circumstance where the graphical indicator 91 to be decoded by the electronic apparatus is fragmented, e.g., the header state region group 911 is incomplete, the graphical indicator 91 cannot be identified, resulting in failure to obtain the information encoded in the content state region group 912 of the graphical indicator 91. Moreover, in order to avoid misidentification of the header state region groups 911, encoding of the content state region group 912 cannot have the same pattern as that of the header state region group 911. Thus, encoding of the content state region group 912 is subject to certain restrictions. In addition, since the graphical indicator 91 uses the presence and absence of black points to represent different encoded information, the number of black points differs as the information varies, resulting in an uneven grayscale pattern, which is easily noticeable by the naked eye.